Minnesota Ethiopians to join pan-ethnic Washington protest on Sunday

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An unlikely, even unprecedented Ethiopian protest march will be held in Washington, DC this Sunday, bringing together for the first time members of many diverse Ethiopian ethnic groups.All of these groups – including members of Ethiopia’s Oromo, Amhara, Tigray, Anuak and Ogaden ethnicities – all say they have suffered brutal economic, military and social repression under the regime Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, which took power in Ethiopia in 1991.But never before have members of these different groups joined together in a large-scale march and protest in Washington. Some 20 Ethiopian immigrants living in Minnesota, representing several ethnic groups, will take part in the march, its organizers say.”Ethiopians from one group usually don’t talk to others, thinking that the others are causing the problems,” said Ahmed Hussein, an Ethiopian immigrant of Oromo ethnicity from Brooklyn Park, MN who will participate in the Sunday march. “But now everyone is feeling the pain. This government is killing its own people and has no respect for human rights. This march is a way to show that Ethiopians are united against this government.”Organized by a recently-formed group called the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia, the protest’s leaders say they hope to draw several thousand marchers drawn from many of Ethiopia’s dozens of ethnic groups. Continue Reading

Ethiopia shakes down its Minnesota refugees

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Immigrants to Minnesota from eastern Ethiopia are being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments to support an Ethiopian security force that tortures and kills thousands of innocent Ethiopians. Under an extortion scheme run by the Ethiopian army, soldiers in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia abduct men, women and teenage boys and girls, holding them without charge in one of scores of military jails in the region, which borders Somalia. Knowing that many Ogaden families have relatives who live in Minnesota, the Ethiopian army tells the prisoners’ families that their loved ones can be freed upon payment of ransoms ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Hating to pay the money but having no other choice, the Minnesota refugees empty their personal bank accounts and pass the hat to raise ransoms to release their husbands, wives, sons, daughters and friends from overcrowded jails where torture, rape, beatings and killings are common. Correction: Photo removed
For about 30 minutes on Monday evening, the Daily Planet ran a photograph of a man being tortured by two uniformed soldiers in a grimy cell. Continue Reading

At a Minnesota market, tales of a hidden Ethiopian war

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The first time I heard Fatima tell her story, I answered in the natural way.   “They killed my husband,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.   “And they killed my son,” she said.  “Oh, I’m so sorry for your losses,” I said.   “And they killed my brothers and some of my brothers’ children,” she said, staring at me with eyes that seemed quite without hope and yet that also seemed to ask me, with astonishing tenacity, ‘Are you really listening, do you really understand?’”   I didn’t know what to say to Fatima at this point, as my repeated condolences seemed pointless. Continue Reading

Eritreans in Minnesota weigh a dream gone mad

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The following headline popped up last week in my email alerts set for Eritrea, a tiny nation bordering the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa: “Eritrea Shuts Christian Students into Shipping Containers.”Shipping containers? What on earth is happening in Eritrea?I know Eritrea is small, but Georgia is small, too. In such small places we often glimpse our fates and futures. And stuffing human beings into bare shipping containers, isn’t that something only a crazed and perverted monster would do? The fiercely proud, patient, hospitable people of Eritrea wouldn’t possibly condone this. Continue Reading

Why I Write About Ethiopia

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ROCHESTER, MN—“Why the hell are you messing with my country’s political affairs?” goes a typical e-mail from the dozens I’ve received this summer from readers living in Ethiopia, from immigrants living in Minnesota, and from throughout the Ethiopian diaspora.And this was among the milder messages to ping my inbox. To a degree I’ve never before experienced as a journalist, articles I’m publishing about human rights abuses in Ethiopia—based on interviews with Ethiopian immigrants living here in Minnesota—have triggered profusely grateful e-mails, and yet also a torrent of messages scorching me with bitter denunciations, extremely pungent abuse and amorphous threats. “You are only spreading hate,” an Ethiopian reader snapped after reading an article about the Ethiopian army wiping out entire villages in the country’s Ogaden region. On Ethiopian web sites around the Internet, my articles are bashed as often as they’re lauded. To admirers, my writings make me a “hero,” a “journalist of integrity” and “a voice for the voiceless.” But to others I’m a “very sad,” “naïve” and “mediocre” journalist who is “fed by propaganda” churned out by bitter Ethiopian refugees. Continue Reading

An Ethiopian politico barnstorms Minnesota

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When Bulcha Demeksa, an opposition member of the Ethiopian Parliament, feels compelled to denounce the Ethiopian Prime Minister, he doesn’t bother to organize a political rally in Ethiopia or search for journalists eager to publish his rhetorical thunderbolts.That’s because opposition rallies are banned in Ethiopia, and the press is government-controlled down to the last pixel and drop of printer’s ink. Plus, Ethiopia’s jails are filled these days with people brave or foolhardy enough to speak out publicly against the regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. By some estimates, as many as 30,000 political prisoners are presently being held in Ethiopian jails. Human Rights Watch and other watchdog groups over the past decade have documented thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and torture of political dissidents. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspSuppressing Opinion
So instead of risking life and limb to speak at home, Demeksa travels to Minnesota. Continue Reading

A Son of Minnesota Returns as a Worldly-Wise Monk

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Jim Reynolds began his 40-minute talk to a group of Mayo Clinic physicians and health care workers last week by closing his eyes, putting his palms together and intoning an ancient chant in a dead language. "I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging; I am of the natureto sicken, I have not gone beyond sickness; I am of the nature to die, I havenot gone beyond dying,” he chanted to the group of doctors, first in the archaicIndian Pali language, and then in an English translation. Jim Reynolds, you will have guessed by now, is a Buddhist monk. He is actuallyknown now only by his Buddhist name, Ajahn Chandako, and he serves as the abbotof a monastery near Auckland, NewZealand. His head is shaved, he never handles money, and he owns little more than hisbegging bowl, a pair of sandals, and the coffee-colored robes on his back. Continue Reading

From Oromia to Minnesota, with love and coffee

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Joe Riemann bestowed one simple name, and in return received overflowing blessings and a beautiful name for himself.The name he received from members of a grateful immigrant community in the Twin Cities is “Jalata,” meaning “One who loves.”As for the simple and single name that he bestowed, bear with me, this will sound implausible but it is absolutely true. Riemann distributes Ethiopian coffee to food cooperatives in Minnesota, and he recently changed the label on vacuum-packed bags of the coffee beans he sells from “Organic Ethiopian” to “Organic Oromian.” Meet Doug in person
A former reporter for The New York Times, and a London and Hong Kong bureau chief of Bloomberg News, Doug McGill now writes from a home base in Rochester, Minnesota. Doug says, “I’m a journalist in Rochester, MN who is trying to practice my craft in a way that helps me and my fellow citizens understand our place in the wider world.” Doug will be the featured guest at this month’s Brown Bag Lunch With a Journalist, at noon Wednesday, July 23 at the East Lake Public Library, 2727 E. Lake St., Minneapolis. The Twin Cities Media Alliance’s monthly Brown Bag Lunches are your chance for casual conversation with one of the Twin Cities’ most insightful journalists — about journalism, politics, or whatever is on your mind. If you rush out of the house without a brown bag, Manny’s Tortas at 2700 East Lake can fill one for you. Continue Reading

From the jungle, insights on words and war

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In her very first interviews last week after being rescued in the jungles of Colombia, following six years of brutal captivity, Ingrid Betancourt remembered and reflected on a great many things. But her most inspiring reflections, I think, were the startling words she uttered on two separate occasions last week about language itself – about words and their profound role in shaping human and political affairs. “We’ve reached a point where we must change the radical extremist vocabulary of hate and very strong words that intimately wound human beings,” she said in a Monday interview with French radio, her voice clear and strong, her eyes alert and piercing. So often in our private and public discourse, we rush to solve our problems with words. We may use them quickly, in defense or reaction, or we may spend time composing careful screeds of reason and reflection. Continue Reading

As Ethiopia boils, Minnesota’s Ethiopians feel the heat

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Ali Abdifatah is out of his mind right now, understandably so.He is desperate to discover the fate of his brother, who was abducted by men with guns last Saturday evening. Since then, his brother hasn’t been seen or heard from and Ali has sat by his telephone and computer at his home in Fridley, calling and emailing, gathering small scraps of information. But that’s a difficult task because his brother, Sultan Fowsi Mohamed Ali, is a clan elder in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, a half a world away from Minnesota. A renowned peacekeeper in the troubled Horn of Africa, whom Amnesty International has called a “prisoner of conscience,” Sultan Fowsi has been held in the giant Ogaden Jail in the town of Jijiga since last August. Then, last Friday afternoon, according to Minnesota Ethiopians who have spoken to eyewitnesses in Ethiopia in cell phone conversations, Ethiopian troops barged into the jail and shot several prisoners. Continue Reading